In the recent review by Miguel for ExtremeMhz.com, he said that you can prevent all of the ATT bloatware from being installed by doing the following: "When you go through the standard startup tutorial and get to the end where it prompts you to tap the screen to continue, you want to have the stylus ready and as soon as you tap the screen with your finger, hit that soft reset button on the bottom of the phone. Upon rebooting, it will skip the long process of installing all the custom AT&T software and will actually save you some precious internal memory as well."
My question is, will doing this void the AT&T warranty or in anyway prevent one from returning the phone to AT&T within the initial 30 return period?
No it won't. That's only a potential issue if you flash an different ROM. But if you're really concerned, or decide to return, just hard reset and let the bloat install.
Related
Ok, so far I've dumped the ROM and uploaded the kaiser-HardSPL and all was going lovely. However, after most of a day of pretty much inactivity I find the device suddenly goes very slowly. By which, I mean it can take several seconds to draw the screen.
Thinking this might be a rogue application using up all the processor cycles, I poked it up the bottom with the stick. (While doing this the first time, I held in power and camera just to see the boot loader text, but then I did it again with no buttons held.) It's a Vodafone device but it sat on the Vodafone splash screen for about 2-3 minutes then spent longer than that on the Windows Mobile screen before eventually dropping me into normality.
Except it's incredibly slow normality - I clicked on "start" and after a minute, it's not done anything yet.
Next step is a hard reset unless anyone has any better suggestion?
Help!
I assume you've pulled the battery?
Never assume anything... The full answer is, "No, but I have now"... I'm not sure that's going to do anything more than a soft (poke up the bottom) reset though. I'm now just waiting for the splash screen to subside while I'm typing this.
Having left it half an hour, while it went into standby and after noticing that the clock had stopped updating, I'm of the opinion that the already slow device has got slower...
Ok between 1 and 2 minutes to move from the splash screen to the "Windows Mobile" screen.
Now there's a turn up... After a further minute or so, I get a message, which has now cleared and gone back to the "Windows Mobile" screen before I had chance to copy it here. Basically it said that it had failed to boot either because I'd turned it off improperly or I'd installed something that it was opposed to. I should press send (I guess the green button) to reset to manufacturer's defaults.
Since that's my next stage anyway, I'll re-poke it with the pointy stick and press 'send' when it pops the message up. I'll put my trusty old Nokia N73 into flight mode and take a picture of the message so I can transcribe it here for everyone's amusement.
More news as it breaks.
I've now hit the 'send' button so it's doing a hard-reset. Meanwhile, here's the text it showed me:
Code:
The device is unable to boot be-
cause either you have turned off
the device incorrectly or tried to
install an application from untrusted
source. Press SEND to reset your
device or press any other button
to cancel. This operation will delete
all your personal data and restore
the device to its factory default
settings.
Nice. Ok, I'm at the 'tap the screen to set up your device' screen now.
Wonder what triggered all that nonsense then...
If you're like the rest of us and tooling around the all the fun programs in this forum, there's no telling.
I tell folks on computers, "Every piece of software you put on a machine is a liability to the operation of that machine." We can say that applies to this nifty little devices too.
I've had my phone experience the same symptoms you have posted here. Luckly for me a battery pull fixed mine. Sounds like the luck didn't spread much. Sorry.
Keep at it though. And don't fret the crashes. They do happen from time to time when you play hard.
So, a hard reset and a restore of a backup (Yes, I made a backup a few days ago even though I've been in the trade 20 years!) later, I'm back to normality. All I've done that's weird is install pof's loader and I can't see that's anything to do with it. What I was doing at the time of the slowdown was trying to connect to the wifi network at work. I thought the networking had just got itself tied in knots somehow but as the machine was even mega slow to boot, I can't really see that. At least I can still get back to square one at the moment.
I just need to create a .nbh out of the rom parts I dumped yesterday so that I can recover from anything more major...
Meanwhile, if you do a 'boot loader reset', would you expect it to say 'serial' if the USB isn't plugged in?
I'm starting to wonder if there is a major bug in the WiFi of the Tilt. There are some other threads on AT&T's site about this, and my work with WiFi on this unit has been dicey. Hmmmmm...
So I'm backpacking around Europe and decided to go without a PC and wouldn't you know it.... My phone is screwed up.
The problem is that I was using TomTom the other night in Norway and I think I either waterlogged the screen or maybe a driver failed in SW. I have been having problems with a certain software combo on top of PDAUltimate and have had to 'reset' the OS because it got painfully slow.
So my question is about if there is a way to reflash the guy or get it to run the 'reset' process where it reinstalls the OS and clears it without a screen (only keyboard) and while it is locked?
See the screen died but I could still run most apps with just the keys at the bottom. However one of them runs the 'Lock' command on the home screen and that's the one I hit. ;( I could unlock it if I could slide the bar but the screen is not working so I can't do that.
Question #2. Is there a way to work the unlock slider from the buttons?
If I could get back to the start menu then I could run the system reset command there.
I did think about getting the files onto a SIM and use the Hard SPL to reflash so that is my long term solution but for now I have no PC.
TyTN4Me said:
So I'm backpacking around Europe and decided to go without a PC and wouldn't you know it.... My phone is screwed up.
The problem is that I was using TomTom the other night in Norway and I think I either waterlogged the screen or maybe a driver failed in SW. I have been having problems with a certain software combo on top of PDAUltimate and have had to 'reset' the OS because it got painfully slow.
So my question is about if there is a way to reflash the guy or get it to run the 'reset' process where it reinstalls the OS and clears it without a screen (only keyboard) and while it is locked?
See the screen died but I could still run most apps with just the keys at the bottom. However one of them runs the 'Lock' command on the home screen and that's the one I hit. ;( I could unlock it if I could slide the bar but the screen is not working so I can't do that.
Question #2. Is there a way to work the unlock slider from the buttons?
If I could get back to the start menu then I could run the system reset command there.
I did think about getting the files onto a SIM and use the Hard SPL to reflash so that is my long term solution but for now I have no PC.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do a master rest. Hold in the 2 softkeys and use stylus to push reset button. It will reload OS from begining. remember to pull SD and sim cards
Well it all depends if your ROM had screen alignment and stuff on cold boot or not! If it doesnt, then you are good to go, if not, you have to use the screen.
Disable auto lock for #2
I had the same issue with sat nav and pda ultimate, hard reset didn't fix, the only solution is to flash another rom, i have had this issue with the 3 latest PDA roms with igo and tom tom.
Hi there,
Is there anything I can do for a T-Mobile ZTE V768 gingerbread phone that doesn't enter recovery mode(it freezes) or download mode(it reboots),
and can't start because it has a pattern and it is locked for T-Mobile? The phone was sent to a friend here in Honduras from the USA. I have really tried to help this guy but have not met my goal yet.... Any ideas would be totally useful....
Regards and thanks in advance,
freakyhn said:
Hi there,
Is there anything I can do for a T-Mobile ZTE V768 gingerbread phone that doesn't enter recovery mode(it freezes) or download mode(it reboots),
and can't start because it has a pattern and it is locked for T-Mobile? The phone was sent to a friend here in Honduras from the USA. I have really tried to help this guy but have not met my goal yet.... Any ideas would be totally useful....
Regards and thanks in advance,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey dude hope this will help
A couple of weeks ago, the iPhone world discovered an exploit (not fixed) that allowed anyone to bypass the lockscreen and access the phone, messages, and even pictures.
Well, the bug has been caught in the GS3 world now, too. A few days ago, mobile enthusiast Terence Eden discovered a flaw that also allowed limited access to certain features of your Samsung Galaxy S3, and only in very certain circumstances. And it works no matter what protection you have enabled...Pattern Lock, PIN, Password, or Face Unlock.
Steps to Exploit #1
Lock your phone and turn the screen back on.
Go to Emergency Call.
Select the Emergency Contact icon on the bottom left.
When in the Emergency Contact screen, hit the Home button.
You will see a flash of your Home Screen (no matter what launcher you are using).
In that second when the Home Screen flashes, you can select an app/widget to execute.
The limitations with this exploit are that almost anything you select will run in the background, and you will be back at the lock screen. Where this exploit can be effective is if, let's say, you have a Direct Dial widget on your homescreen. In this case, someone can hit this widget, and the call will go through.
While this is something that should be fixed, it doesn't actually allow you to do much, so really, it's not all that scary. Unfortunately, the fun doesn't end there.
Yesterday, Sean McMillan of Full Disclosure opened up the initial exploit and discovered something much scarier. If successful, not only will this exploit open up the full contents and capabilities of your S3, but it will disable the lock screen completely until the phone is rebooted.
Steps to Exploit #2
Lock your phone and turn the screen back on.
Go to Emergency Call.
Select the Emergency Contact icon on the bottom left.
When in the Emergency Contact screen, hit the Home button.
Immediately after hitting Home, press the Power button.
If you did this correctly, the next time you press Power, your device will go directly to your homescreen.
This is obviously not good. Sean does note that you may need to do this multiple times to get it to work. Also, it doesn't matter what launcher you are using, or whether you are using a lockscreen replacement or not.
In the interest of full disclosure, I tried about 30 times, both with my rooted/modded phone, and with a bone-dry stock phone, and I couldn't replicate it.
But, just because I couldn't do it, doesn't mean it isn't real and dangerous. At this point, there has not been any word out of Samsung regarding this exploit, but I imagine a response and a patch will be on their way shortly.
Atif Naser
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Hacked, Touchscreen unresponsive
Hi! I need help with my tablet.
Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Tablet, model GT-P5113 TS. This model doesn't have a way to yank out the battery.
What's wrong: Touchscreen is not responding.
Current state: Attempting to drain the battery. Doesn't appear to be turned on. Factory reset apparently performed.
What happened: Sorry, this is long. It is as best as I can remember it. It may be somewhat inaccurate.
Yesterday evening, I was on my Windows laptop and logged into my Google account. I *thought* I used the Google Play Store to install Chrome to the tablet. (I had looked at the html5test website and it said Chrome had a higher HTML5 rating than the Dolphin/Jetpack browser I've been using on my tablet.)
But something went terribly wrong.
After sending Chrome to it, I unlocked the tablet and used both Chrome and Dolphin to go to html5test website. They both scored the same or nearly the same. I don't know if any of that is relevant, but I'm including it just in case.
At some point after that, I woke the tablet with the power key and used my unlock pattern on the dots lock screen.
That's when I saw what I believe was mal-ware in action. The settings menus were scrolling and sub-menus being selected, all by themselves. I couldn't say exactly what was changed because whatever program or script that was running the process was going extremely fast.
When I realized it might be trying to send out data over my Wifi network, I turned off the Wifi router in my home.
I repeatedly held down the power key to turn the system off, but doing so only rebooted back to the useless lock screen which was not responding to anything. The normal method of holding the power button for a few seconds to bring up the menu and then tapping the "Power Off" option on that menu refused to power off the system. Nothing on that menu responded to touch.
Entering my pattern on the lock screen did absolutely nothing. I didn't even see any lines traced when I ran my finger over the screen.
At some point, I pulled out the external SD card. I have no idea if whatever hacked the tablet also put a copy of itself on the SD card.
I called a friend who looked up how to restore the tablet to factory settings. I didn't understand the directions exactly, so I ended up on a screen with a Warning!! about installing a Custom OS. (Holding down the Power + Volume Up seems to get me there)
I left it on this screen, and I turned my router back on and using my laptop, contacted Live Chat at Samsung but they didn't understand my problem. They told me to reboot the device and swipe my pattern several times and then after several failed attempts I would have the chance to use my Google credentials to get into it. But the device apparently never registered that my swipe attempts were failing.
So my device was booted up with me locked out, with the WiFi router on for a little while again. I turned off the router as soon as I realized that. That disconnected the chat session, but since Samsung chat wasn't helping me anyway, I didn't bother trying to go back.
I got the device back to the "Warning!!" screen. Then turned the router back on and searched for how to do a factory reset of the device. I found a video on YouTube and followed it.
I pressed the Volume Down and Power buttons simultaneously, followed by letting go of the power button. That brought up a menu which contained several options, including an option to do a factory reset. I used the volume buttons to highlight that and pressed Power key. A second screen came up and I used the volume buttons and power button to select "Yes" to confirm the reset.
It appeared to have done a factory reset, rebooting eventually.
However, after that, when I tried to tap on the touch screen to move forward through the selections, the touch screen was still unresponsive!
So I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and ran the battery down until the screen was blank and it wouldn't start when I held the power key.
Then I charged it for about 20 minutes and rebooted it. I think when it came back it was on the Recovery menu. I think I did a second factory reset, but not 100% sure. It eventually rebooted after a lot longer than usual.
When it came up, it was saying battery was low. I tried to tap the OK button, but nothing happened. Behind the battery window was the first setting screen to set up the device for the first time after a factory reset. (I think selecting USA?)
I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and left it on overnight so that the battery would run down.
That was about 8 hours ago. When I woke up, I used clear tape to keep the power button pressed down, to ensure that the battery will continue to run down.
____________________________________________
What do I do next? How do I get the touch screen to start working again? It is not a hardware problem, unless mal-ware can break the hardware. The touchscreen had been working fine until this happened.
Should I take the tablet back to Best Buy where I bought it at least a year (maybe 2 years) ago? I don't know if it's still under warranty.
I have over 20 year of experience as a software developer, but not for Android. I am not very experienced with doing anything to hardware.
Should I try to fix it myself?
I have never rooted any Android device and I'm not sure what that means, either.
I've never re-installed the ______ ? (rom? image? Odin?)
I read on this and/or other forums that there's a way to replace something, but the instructions were beyond my level of understanding. I would need the procedures to be broken down into steps which don't assume too much about what I know.
I understand how to download a file to Windows, given a URL for it. I understand what a zip file is and how to extract it. I understand how to press hardware buttons and plug in cables, and do these steps in the order I'm told.
I don't understand what I'd use to get the downloaded whatever-they-are onto the tablet to replace whatever-the-other-thing-is so that the touchscreen works again.
As far as I know, Odin is a Norse god.
The only firmware updates I've ever done are the ones that the device does on it's own through Samsung's updates.
I'd deeply appreciate getting this device back since I have extremely limited funds and probably won't be able to buy a replacement.
Thank you,
Linda
LMurphy said:
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Hacked, Touchscreen unresponsive
Hi! I need help with my tablet.
Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Tablet, model GT-P5113 TS. This model doesn't have a way to yank out the battery.
What's wrong: Touchscreen is not responding.
Current state: Attempting to drain the battery. Doesn't appear to be turned on. Factory reset apparently performed.
What happened: Sorry, this is long. It is as best as I can remember it. It may be somewhat inaccurate.
Yesterday evening, I was on my Windows laptop and logged into my Google account. I *thought* I used the Google Play Store to install Chrome to the tablet. (I had looked at the html5test website and it said Chrome had a higher HTML5 rating than the Dolphin/Jetpack browser I've been using on my tablet.)
But something went terribly wrong.
After sending Chrome to it, I unlocked the tablet and used both Chrome and Dolphin to go to html5test website. They both scored the same or nearly the same. I don't know if any of that is relevant, but I'm including it just in case.
At some point after that, I woke the tablet with the power key and used my unlock pattern on the dots lock screen.
That's when I saw what I believe was mal-ware in action. The settings menus were scrolling and sub-menus being selected, all by themselves. I couldn't say exactly what was changed because whatever program or script that was running the process was going extremely fast.
When I realized it might be trying to send out data over my Wifi network, I turned off the Wifi router in my home.
I repeatedly held down the power key to turn the system off, but doing so only rebooted back to the useless lock screen which was not responding to anything. The normal method of holding the power button for a few seconds to bring up the menu and then tapping the "Power Off" option on that menu refused to power off the system. Nothing on that menu responded to touch.
Entering my pattern on the lock screen did absolutely nothing. I didn't even see any lines traced when I ran my finger over the screen.
At some point, I pulled out the external SD card. I have no idea if whatever hacked the tablet also put a copy of itself on the SD card.
I called a friend who looked up how to restore the tablet to factory settings. I didn't understand the directions exactly, so I ended up on a screen with a Warning!! about installing a Custom OS. (Holding down the Power + Volume Up seems to get me there)
I left it on this screen, and I turned my router back on and using my laptop, contacted Live Chat at Samsung but they didn't understand my problem. They told me to reboot the device and swipe my pattern several times and then after several failed attempts I would have the chance to use my Google credentials to get into it. But the device apparently never registered that my swipe attempts were failing.
So my device was booted up with me locked out, with the WiFi router on for a little while again. I turned off the router as soon as I realized that. That disconnected the chat session, but since Samsung chat wasn't helping me anyway, I didn't bother trying to go back.
I got the device back to the "Warning!!" screen. Then turned the router back on and searched for how to do a factory reset of the device. I found a video on YouTube and followed it.
I pressed the Volume Down and Power buttons simultaneously, followed by letting go of the power button. That brought up a menu which contained several options, including an option to do a factory reset. I used the volume buttons to highlight that and pressed Power key. A second screen came up and I used the volume buttons and power button to select "Yes" to confirm the reset.
It appeared to have done a factory reset, rebooting eventually.
However, after that, when I tried to tap on the touch screen to move forward through the selections, the touch screen was still unresponsive!
So I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and ran the battery down until the screen was blank and it wouldn't start when I held the power key.
Then I charged it for about 20 minutes and rebooted it. I think when it came back it was on the Recovery menu. I think I did a second factory reset, but not 100% sure. It eventually rebooted after a lot longer than usual.
When it came up, it was saying battery was low. I tried to tap the OK button, but nothing happened. Behind the battery window was the first setting screen to set up the device for the first time after a factory reset. (I think selecting USA?)
I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and left it on overnight so that the battery would run down.
That was about 8 hours ago. When I woke up, I used clear tape to keep the power button pressed down, to ensure that the battery will continue to run down.
____________________________________________
What do I do next? How do I get the touch screen to start working again? It is not a hardware problem, unless mal-ware can break the hardware. The touchscreen had been working fine until this happened.
Should I take the tablet back to Best Buy where I bought it at least a year (maybe 2 years) ago? I don't know if it's still under warranty.
I have over 20 year of experience as a software developer, but not for Android. I am not very experienced with doing anything to hardware.
Should I try to fix it myself?
I have never rooted any Android device and I'm not sure what that means, either.
I've never re-installed the ______ ? (rom? image? Odin?)
I read on this and/or other forums that there's a way to replace something, but the instructions were beyond my level of understanding. I would need the procedures to be broken down into steps which don't assume too much about what I know.
I understand how to download a file to Windows, given a URL for it. I understand what a zip file is and how to extract it. I understand how to press hardware buttons and plug in cables, and do these steps in the order I'm told.
I don't understand what I'd use to get the downloaded whatever-they-are onto the tablet to replace whatever-the-other-thing-is so that the touchscreen works again.
As far as I know, Odin is a Norse god.
The only firmware updates I've ever done are the ones that the device does on it's own through Samsung's updates.
I'd deeply appreciate getting this device back since I have extremely limited funds and probably won't be able to buy a replacement.
Thank you,
Linda
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definitely sounds like malware. You have two choices that I see, either root and custom rom or flash back to stock. Since you are stock you'd just be overwriting your existing install. Read this thread and decide your course of action http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2203309
I bought a used S2 Classic on ebay. It came factory reset, so I went to install and setup when I received it. I was able to install Samsung Gear on my Galaxy S5 with no problems, but once I was able to connect to the watch, it stopped behaving. Any move I try to make upon the watch itself simply results in a one second look at the screen, before going dark for about 3 seconds, and then flashing the screen for another second. It will do this a few times and then quit. I have tried several factory resets, as well as removing all the gear software from my phone and rebooting it as well. When the apps are finished it tries to update the watch, but the watch says 'update failed, please visit a samsung service center.' Sadly I live in the back of beyond, so.....
Anyways, please help. I have been scouring both this site and google for two days without any answers. I really don't want to have to return this. It's so pretty. And shiny.....we like shiny..... :silly:
After messing some more, I did notice that the update stops at 13% every time and then fails. I have seen this same problem on another post, but no solution was forthcoming short of the aforementioned visit to the ever-distant samsung service center.
Thinking I may be returning this one and shelling out the extra $$ for a new one.
UPDATE: Got sick of this dead thing, so after much ado about nothing, I am sending it back for a refund. I went to Best Buy today and bought a new one, as they had them on sale. Love it so far. Not gonna miss the dead one. LOL
I have the same problem. I think I will need to get it to a service point.
While it performed a firmware update the HR-app did checked my heartrate and I guess this stopped the firmware update.
What now happens is: vibrate-samsung logo-screen off-repeat
When I use these steps:
-switch off device*
-press and hold Power button, till you get the Samsung Gear Rebooting.. Screen.*
-press power button several times very short
-the bootloader menue should open
-select recovery by pressing the power button.*
-apply selection by pressing and holding the power button*
The option recovery is not available, only continue download and Power off.
I guess there is no software left to recover.
Do you know if there is anything I can do myself now?
(There is no wireless download option also, only normal download)
With thanks and greetings wishing everyone a nice day